On November sixteenth, nineteen ninety two, a teenage couple was held up on West Washington Street in Chicago, and the young man, Shahar and Brandon, was shot dead, but the young lady said that she had not seen the shooter's face. Another witness statement raised the name Blue, the nickname of a local man named Roosevelt Miles. Soon the female victim also identified Blue, sending Roosevelt away for sixty long years.
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Welcome back to Ronfel Conviction. Today, we've got a Chicago story involving another gang unit detective out of Area five, the same notorious unit as Ray Guevera and Ernest Halverson, which may give our regular listeners an inkling of what our guests today Endured Roosevelt Miles. Thanks for being here and joining us today, and along with him, Ashley Cohne from the Bonine Law Group. We appreciate you being here as well, of course. So let's get right into it.
Tell us about your childhood. What was it like growing up in Chicago at that time?
Life is great.
Learned a lot of skills from my father, a lot of cooking skills from my mom. Kid, you know, went to school, boy scout, junior police officer, just did everything that the kid does, graduated, went to college.
But his trajectory in life was interrupted by a mix of cannabis possession charges, which most people agreed should never have been a thing, and then the first of two wrongful convictions when he was about twenty three years old and charged for the actions of a juvenile family friend.
I was with a young man and a young lady. I've been knowing a young man. His family's like family to me. They was like sixteen seventeen, so he couldn't drive, So his mom gave me the car to take him to the store. And they went to the mall and we was all in there. I was doing something else and so I went looking for him, and J. C. Penny now said, I know I got bumba rushed by the police. So apparently they had picked him and her up from using a froggling credit card and they charged me with So.
They stuck Roosevelt with his forgery charge rather than bothering with the two juveniles.
But Daryl was on probation for maljuana offenses. Lawyer say, well, you got this other case, so you need to cop out now copped out, which I sunis should never because that wasn't my case.
I did eighteen months.
These are the wrongful convictions that we rarely ever even hear about, but they're probably the most prevalent where people just plead guilty and take a short sentence as a matter of being practical, they're avoiding the risk of losing a trial and multiplying the length of their sentence. So after eighteen months, Roosevelt parolled out and they began working for the Chicago Parks District, but his record kept them on the radar of police in November of nineteen ninety two.
So on November sixteenth, nineteen ninety two, a sixteen year old by the name of Shaharan Brandon, who goes by the nickname Tony, was with his girlfriend, Octavius Morris, who is nicknamed Tweety. She was fifteen years old at the time, and the two of them were at her mother's house on the forty eight hundred block of West Washington Boulevard in Chicago, Illinois, and they decided at two thirty in the morning that they wanted to go get something to eat.
Once outside, according to Morris, a gunman came up, said this is a stick up and fired several shots at Tony. She actually ran and she came back to the scene. Then police came and speak to any witnesses. So Octavia says that there were two shooters. One a teenage boy wearing all black clothing, that he was six feet tall, and she also says that she didn't see his face. And she said that she had seen another individual underneath the porch and she also described him as a teenager.
Was a dogs young man feet eight feet nine teenager.
Then there was another witness he was a sex worker and she was down the block, and she says that she only saw one shooter, but both had described the shooter as teenager six feet tall. So those facts remained consistent.
So the description these individuals never fit me at all. Age and nothing say fifteen to sixteen young men. I was twenty eight, so it could.
Never match me.
And that was more solidly confirmed shortly after the shooting.
The original reports say that there were many individuals in the area on the sea. So Roosevelt he lived in the neighborhood. So he is picked up by two officers and taken over to the scene.
Well, they didn't force me walk, They just walked with me over to the police car that was parked at the crime scene. And so when we got over there, they stum me back, come and the witness in the car say it wasn't me.
Octavius and Sandra Birch, who is the sex worker down the street, they both knew him from the neighborhood, and they both knew him as Blue, and they both tell the police, no, that wasn't him. I know, we know who that is. That's Blue, That he was not the shooter, okay, and the cops let him go.
The two witnesses agreed that it wasn't Roosevelt, who they knew as Blue, but they did agree on the description of at least one of the shooters a six foot tall teenager wearing dark clothing. But the investigation goes off the rails as Sandra Birch, with the trappings of her line of work, was vulnerable to coercion, and then Octavius also had a vulnerability. After all, Remember it's a little odd that despite her vantage point, she claimed that she had not seen the shooter's face.
They assumed that Sweety knew more than she let on. It was actually the victim's family who brought it to the attention of the cops, and they thought that she may have known who the shooter was a former boyfriend. So there were some cops that were looking into that lead. But at some point we see a very well known disgraced officer, Anthony Wochik and his lackeys Ruthiford and McDonald.
Once Wochick gets involved, there was some transformation in the reports that instead of Sandra Birch saying I saw blue at the scene and told the officers it wasn't him, it turned into I saw Blue standing over the body at the time of the murder.
Simultaneously, it appears Wochik turned up the pressure on Octavius.
They went to her house multiple times and kept saying, we know it was blue, just say it was blue. And eventually she capitulated and she said it was blue. I mean, she's fifteen years old. She's scared the cops keep coming to her house. She does not have a
clean background. She was part of a gang herself. She had a history of some criminal misconduct, and so they use that to basically persuade her and Sandra Burt to testify before the grand jury so that they have them under oath and then if they change their story, they can threaten them with perjury.
And with both of their statements, they arrest the same man who both witnesses had cleared at the crime scene.
Troll me a police say, and you took me upstairs on the second floor into a interrogation room and they immediately handcuffed me to the bench. I was beaten by Detective Anthony Woji with a toughphone book and a maglight to say I'd done something that I didn't do.
I was choked and this process.
Went on without being able to use to wash room or eat for two days. And at one point I told me, I started crying, you can kill me because I'm not gonna say nothing that I didn't do. I didn't allow them to be the confession out of me.
You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I don't believe we've ever heard of someone walking out of the Chicago interrogation room, which is really a torture room, let's call it what it is, having held on to their truth. It's remarkable, really, But nevertheless, they still had two witness statements, never mind how far
their testimony departed from their original statements. But yet it still took all the way until January of nineteen ninety six to take Roosevelt to trial.
There's reasons for why it was taking that long. So one thing that happened is we know Sandra Birch she had died. Another thing that happened. Roosevelt's public defenders go to see Tweety and she provides a handwritten and a typewritten statement to their investigators, basically saying, the police kept coming to my house and telling me to say that Blue is the one who did it and the only reason I said that it was blue is because they were forcing me to do and I don't know who
the shooter was, but it was not blue. So they're scrambling to figure out their case, which is why continuance after continuance. They're figuring out what they can do. And what we see in the file is the victim's family member comes into the police station and says, my wife was out and was talking to a woman by the name of Deborah Lenore who said she was with Roosevelt on the night of the shooting with her brother at the dragons Den. So Roosevelt he actually was like a
block and a half away when the shooting happened. He heard the shots. He was coming out of a friend of his house, and he saw a buddy of his, Michael Hooker, and then he went to the dragons Den later that night.
Yes, a motorcycle MC. They have pool tournaments. I shoot pool and on Sunday nicest pool tournament time.
According to statements from Debra Lenore and her brother Oliver in nineteen ninety three, they did see Roosevelt that night when he was at the motorcycle club hours after the.
Shooting, but then in nineteen ninety five, two years later, all of a sudden, there's this whole circumstantial story where he ran up to Deborah and Oliver after the shots, and it kind of just seemed a little sketchy that he was running out from where the shootings came from, and that ultimately ends up being the story that goes
to trial. And I mean, even according to Tweety, from what we know now, Debora Lenor, who's also now deceased, she had a drug problem, was apparently being provided some drugs by the cops, at least that's what Tweety had mentioned to us. And so they take these individuals who are susceptible to coercion and they mold these stories into something that they want to tell to a jury that they think is sufficient to convict an innocent person like Roosevelt.
After more than three long years in Cook County jail, the trial finally began in January nineteen ninety six, and by this time, the state's attorneys Milkititch and Lynch, along with the locked grand jury testimony and a threat of perjury, had Octavius back on her coerce story again.
She flips back, and she says the reason she says it wasn't Blue is because she was scared that he was going to do something to her. So that's her reason for initially not saying that it was him, then saying that it was him, then saying that it wasn't him, and now testifying that it was him. So she testifies, and the jury hears that she provided a statement to the investigators, and it's messy. There are two cops that testify.
One basically says, no, we only went to Octavius Morris's house once, we didn't go there five to six times. And then one officer testifies that after they interviewed a witness, they went looking for Blue.
So the two officers testimony served to both clear up the messiness around Octavius Morris's recantation and gave the appearance that the suspicion of Roosevelt had come from an independent source.
So the judge didn't let in that there was this witness, Sandra Birch. But there's an exception where it's like the course of the investigation, so you know, it makes it seem like there was a witness who identified Blue and that's what made them go look for him and.
Without her there or even naming her, there was no way to impeach that evidence, perhaps raising how she hadn't identified Roosevelt at the show up and what made her change her version of events. And then there was a garbled and nonsensical, circumstantial evidence from Debra Lenore and her brother Oliver.
Oliver had passed away actually at that point as well. So Deborah just testifies that basically this story of her walking down the street and Roosevelt just comes running up behind her and it's around the time of the shooting, and that's it. It's so far fetched, but these pieces being put together, apparently back in ninety six was sufficient for to convict him.
Thinking I was gonna get a fair trial, thinking the lawyer that I had, mister even would represent me to the fullest. And when I sit down and heard the testimony, he barely object to a lot of what was brought out, especially things dealing with the dead prostitute that shouldn't have never been brought out.
But they allowed Jewurry to hear this.
Halfway through, I'd say, I I know I'm going to prison. If the jury would have knew how they all played out the scenario his whole case, I would have never been found guilty.
But I didn't have a representation to do that.
One thing about Roosevelt's public defender, he did try to get in a lot of things that the judge just would not allow him to get into. There were early on statements about the potential third party offender who was Octavius's former boyfriend, but he didn't do the work of really trying to explore that as much as she should have. And because he couldn't give the judge enough of a proffer related to that, he borrowed it from coming in.
In addition, Roosevelt's attorney could have called his alibi witness, Michael Hooker. So that left Octavius Morris's fabricated identification and the circumstantial support, and somehow that was enough to send Roosevelt away for sixty years.
So when they found me guilty, I just stood. Didn't shop, you know, I just stood, didn't shop. The day I got sentenced, I asked Judge porter.
Can't see my parents? He denied me.
Tell me they could pass me through. Why would you say that these are elderly people. He's my mom and dad. So that was the last time I saw my mom, and she passed away. Well, I was in prison, and she didn't ever come see me because I didn't want to come see me.
And that was the last time I saw was in trial.
Being shipped to Stateville was a whole different avenue. You ever been in a place and you just numb. I felt numb. And I got into sale with a guy I knowed. He was a little guy from the neighborhood. I come to find out his auntie's was my neighbors. I didn't even know that until we got to talking. But I felt somewhere okay, But you never okay. My life is never the same, you know, And s one night, I'm I'm in the sale, my CELLI at work by two and the more instorment and my.
Next little neighbor killed his selling. That's trauma.
Man being a m a grown man hollering, screaming, that's trauma. And I'm in here for somebody, and do I can honestly say that most of the staff was very supportive of my innocent because if you didn't see me at work, I was in the law light Berry. If I wasn't in a law light Beary, I was on a visit. I barely went to the yard, and that's how I gave him a bit. You know, my days was spent researching, and as she would tell you, I did so much work.
I ran through three typewriters, you know, because I knew I was innocent. You know, Anderson fight for life, the guilty fight for a short period. I'm still fighting.
After the boiler plate denials on direct appeal, Roosevelt did his post conviction fileingx pro sey, meaning on his own without an attorney, and that began with an affidavit from Michael Hooker, who had not only been with him, but had also seen him come out of his house after the shooting had already occurred.
Michael Hooker was an alibi witness that Roosevelt had told it public defender about at the time, and he didn't call him at trial. He didn't get his affidavit and he didn't get his testimony.
Yeah, the infa custy accouncil fulfilure called my alibi witness. It was denied, and I peeled it and the season came back December two thousand and once I ready, I said I'm going home.
Ultimately, Roosevelt was granted a hearing and evidentiary hearing after he did provide a affidavit from Michael Hooker basically saying that he was with him on the night when they heard the shots were fired.
But I waited eighteen years his hearing.
The judge just basically allows it to languish. So he is tossed around from public defender to public defender. He has one public defender who is actually doing really good work for him, but unfortunately he also died. The amount of people who have died in Roosevelt's case is actually insane. But another one takes over and just sits, and it sits and sits, and finally, in twenty seventeen, Roosevelt finds us the Bonjin Law Group. I remember it like it
was yesterday. I was new from out of law school. I get this massive file from the public defender's office that was fifteen thousand pages. And part of our responsibility as post conviction attorneys is we have to find new evidence, right, so we make efforts to go to Octavius's house multiple times. It seems like we weren't the only ones. The state
was also trying to talk to her. At that time, there was a new conviction integrity unit at the Cook County States Attorney's Office, and we wrote to them, said, this case is so weak. There's no evidence. There's just this one recanted eyewitness identification that is not even legitimate because she says she didn't see the shooter's face in the beginning, and why are you sticking to this? So we thought we would maybe get played there.
We didn't, and.
We kept striking out with Octavius, and then all of a sudden, one day she decided to call our office and she said, I told the police I knew who Blue was, and I knew it was not Blue. And she says, I remember the guy, the officer's name, because it was my brother's name, and my brother's name was Tony, and Tony kept coming to my house and saying, this is the person who did it. And if you don't testify, then we're going to say that you were involved in the sho shooting and you knew who did it, or
you had some responsibility. So you have to testify and say that it was Roosevelt's end of story. Done deal. So ultimately she.
Does, and of course Tony was Detective Anthony Wochick. Octavius Morris later swore an affid David to exactly what she had said over the phone, exactly has she had said it when she recanted all those years ago to Roosevelt's trial attorney, and so Ashley amended Roosevelt's two thousand filing with this Affi David.
And one of the biggest things in our post conviction petition that we had filed. A lot of the new evidence was related to Anthony Wochik's pattern and practice of misconduct that has come to light over the years. Anthony Wochk rose the ranks through his thirty years at the Chicago Police Department with little to no supervision or discipline. There were scores of allegations and findings of misconduct against Wocheck.
So I did afore you request and somebody gave me at the new Woji Police complain history, which they don't do, and I found out that he had forty three complaints against him.
Early on in Wocheck's career, he was criminally prosecuted for beating up a man who was found in bed with some female lover of his and the case was dismissed. That was the beginning of his career, and he still rose the ranks. He went police officer, detective, sergeant, lieutenant like they did nothing about this problem officer all these years, and the exoneration project in Chicago, you know, Carl Leonard and David Owens, they did a lot of legwork getting
will Check pattern and practice witnesses. And during one of our post conviction hearings for two other individuals Canaan Abrago to were victims of Detective will Check, we put on I want to say, fourteen different witnesses, former police officers, to public defenders, to inmates, who provided compelling evidence of misconduct throughout his career and he was untouchable, and he used that to coorse confessions, manipulate witnesses, to frame innocent people,
and he got away with it. Detective Willcheck eventually retired in May twenty sixteen after the Office of the Inspector General found that he had committed a litany of violations, including making false reports, during the investigation of the events that led up to Laqwan McDonald's shooting.
In case you don't remember, Lakwan MacDonald was a seventeen year old kid who was alleged to have been walking down the street in Chicago welding a knife and was shot by officer Jason van Dyck after he allegedly refused to drop the weapon, and the police reports from multiple officers were pretty much identical as to what had happened.
So Wojet was the supervisor lieutenant in his case, but he got a call from up higher and the call was told him, I get that, didn't write Tony. Can't you make this case go away? How you make the case go away? You lieutenant? You investigate cases.
After Lakwan MacDonald was shot, Anthony Wiochik basically helped officers make a bunch of reports.
And he wrote that this was just a Bible homicide.
But then video emerged showing that Lakwan had been murdered, Let's call it what it is, shot sixteen times, despite having complied with Officer Van Dyke's order, and he was not a threat. In fact, when he was killed, he was walking away.
And everybody say that it just one apple and the barrel is just right. No, the barrol is writing.
And so with Octavius Morris's Affie David, supported by Wolchik's pattern and practice evidence, Ashley, along with Jennifer bon Jean, finally was able to get him back into court in twenty eighteen.
And they gave me the hearing.
Remember I say eighteen years, right, It took the Jewish less than five minutes. Did deny my post deviction.
Roosevelt's trial judge from nineteen ninety six, Judge Porter, after waiting eighteen years to follow through on the hearing he granted back in two thousand, dismissed the ineffective assistance of council claim as untimely. Yeah, So while I try to compose myself and get my shit together off, Mike Roosevelt can tell us about how, instead of the justice he deserved, he was paroled out after twenty eight years of his sixty year sentence.
So I got paroled two years short of thirty years because of good conduct credit. I received my Pearl leeue certificated state buil they county that worked twenty one years in correctional industry. So I got good time for that. So I was released two years earl. But the same time that I was a release in the Tedi court decision that came down stating did I get an evidentiary hearing?
Once we got back, we get back to Judge Porter recuses himself we go to a second judge, Judge Rain's Judge Rains. There's a whole other story there that involves Jenny and Judge Rains being caught on a hot mic.
Judge Rains was on a zoom call that he thought had ended, and he said something about Jennifer Bonjing to the effect of, man, can you imagine waking up to her every morning? Now? I find miss Bonding to be a particularly wonderful individual. So I'm not sure what this guy's problem was, But either way, those zoom calls were recorded and they got leaked, it went viral.
He ends up not only recusing himself but having to go to judge jail. So then finally we find ourselves in front of Judge Howard, and she presided over Cain and Abrigo's evidentiary hearing. So she had been a little familiar with Anthony Wochik and all the pattern in practice. And we get ready to go to our hearing December fifth, twenty twenty two. He was locked up December seventh, in nineteen ninety two, it was almost to the day Octavius
Morris shows up. We're all ready to go, and the state's attorney Todd Dombrowski says that they're going to agree to post conviction relief and dismiss the charges and vacated his conviction.
So I came home in twenty twenty and twenty twenty two, I was desgonerated twenty twenty four.
Agamma certificate and isdent.
You have to affirmatively prove that you're actually innocent, which by statue in Illinois, if you are actually innocent, you could be entitled to compensation. I think it maxes out around two hundred and fifty five thousand, two hundred and seventy five thousand dollars. And we're like, great, they're not going to intervene in this. The state's not going to take a position because they vacated his charges. But lo and behold they did.
This decision really struck me as strange. The current office has done really great work and has been very transparent in acknowledging the city's dark past and those responsible for many of whom have been repeatedly profiled here John Birge and the Midnight Crew detectives Guevara and Halverson. But despite the condemning evidence against Anthony Wochick, they'd go so far
as to try to leave Roosevelt in limbo. Charge is dismissed, but not willing to admit to and endorse his innocence as they clearly should.
Wichuk is a very big problem for the city of Chicago. But for some reason, and I'm noticing a lot like the Cook County State's Attorney's office. While they're willing to admit that Guevara was a bad officer, they are not willing to admit that Wochik was a bad officer. They will do whatever to protect that man. And when that happens, it seems to me that there has to be some other reason why. There's some political something going on that suggests that there is a reason to protect him.
But eventually there's a little light at the end of this long, miserable tunnel.
July thirty, first, we went to a five hour, contentious hearing arguing the state was trying to say that he can't affirmatively prove his innocence, and the judge same day said this case had slim evidence to begin with, and there is no evidence to rebut what Roosevelt is saying, so he gets his certificate of innocence. End of story.
I wish you all the best in the civil litigation, Roosevelt. There's no amount that they could ever forgive you that would make up for this. But in the meantime, is there anything that you'd like, any action steps that you'd like our audience to take.
I won't tell the audience. You know I'm doing good. I have no profit organization in por call help break the chain. I'dafted the school while go in I do one on ones with students and small groups, and I try to better myself each and every day. God wakes me up and give me life. Everything got the that I'd give back to him, So I'm not bitter. I just hate that I lost my parents seven months apart
in sixteen to seventeen. But I know they watch his old me, every movie, every step I make, and I'm just happy to have my Earth angels in my corn.
Ashley and Jennifer.
These young ladies brought me out of here, out of Pitiphire and brought me to life, gave me life back as they do with so many others. We're family, That's all I can say. We're family, and I'd just like to see Woji have his day in court where everybody sees his true clothes and who this man really is.
Amen to that, and we're going to have your nonprofit linked in the episode description, so for anyone who wants to get involved, please check it out. And with that we go now to closing arguments, where first of all, I thank both of you again for sharing this unbelievable story. I'm gonna kick back in my chair with my microphone off and my headphones on and just listen to anything else you want to share. Ashley, you go first, and then Roosevelt, you take us off into the sunset.
For the sixty year in a row, Chicago ranked the first in the number of exonerations across the United States. They are the wrongful conviction cap of the world. They've paid over seven hundred and thirty five million dollars in connection with lawsuits for wrongful convictions. The number does not consider the attorney's fees and the cost paid to private firms to defend these unwinnable cases. And there's over two hundred wrongful conviction cases currently pending in the Northern District
of Illinois right now. There were issues back in the nineties in the eighties that really hurt a lot of people, and it should trigger something in the City of Chicago to say, you know what, we really need to evaluate these cases. We need to look at these individuals, assess their cases early on, and provide compensation. I mean, Roosevelt's sixty years old. He doesn't want to spend the next
seven years fighting in court. He'd be open to a reasonable settlement amount for what he went through, because we all know there's absolutely no amount of money that can compensate somebody for wrongful conviction. Give them the opportunity to rebuild their life and to start a new and fairly,
and then maybe you'll save some money. Maybe don't think about you know, oh how it's going to hurt your pocket now, think about down the road it's going to hurt a lot more when the city goes bankrupt because they have twenty two hundred wrongful conviction cases that they have to pay out astronomical money and also to attorneys fees.
It's just it's so short sighted, and there really needs to be somebody who comes in who looks at these cases for what they are early on and figures out how to settle them in a way that makes the individual on the other side happy enough. To move on with their life. It's a real problem and I really hope somebody can figure this out for all of them.
All right, I like, thank lover and you guys doing what y'all do. It helps show America what Chicago's really about when it comes to these wrongful convictions. We need to take the whole justice system ill and get it Redone need a due over, just like you're doing makeover.
Need a due over.
I wrote doj a Bapti years ago and they wrote me back and said they gonna work on it. Yet it still hasn't happened. But now one of the former lawyers on my case is working to change it. We need change because if we don't, it's gonna be a whole lot of payment coming. And it's a lot of people that's in prison for wrongful conviction, not count the people that didn't even fight it and came home from these wrongful convictions.
You know, I know a lot of them. They gave up. So I just wanted us to be back right right, society back right, man.
You know, we need to get let the legislators and they'll know to sit down and go to work on it, because it's a bill out now where they'll pay me zero point five million for my cl I.
All you got to do is sign that bill, quitn sitting on it. But I'm here.
I'm here to testify that God is good, people are good, and I know that our lesson lady got some type of goods in their heart where they see this, because my case should never happened and it should never linger in court for twenty two years like it done.
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cliburn. The music in this production was supplied by three time
OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with signal company number one